Sterling Commerce Positioned in the "Leaders" Quadrant for Integration Service Providers

COLUMBUS, OH--(Marketwire - December 3, 2009) - Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc company, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the leaders quadrant of the research firm's report, "Magic Quadrant for Integration Service Providers." The solutions evaluated for the report were Sterling Collaboration Network, a hosted service that provides secure connectivity and collaboration between businesses, and Sterling Commerce Managed Services, a business-to-business (B2B) outsourcing offering.

For this report, Gartner evaluated 17 key integration service providers against their ability to execute and completeness of vision. For this report, Gartner analysts "evaluate providers on the quality and efficacy of the processes, systems, methods or procedures that enable IT provider performance to be competitive, efficient and effective, and to positively affect revenue, retention and reputation. Providers are judged on their ability and success in capitalizing on their vision."

"The Sterling Business Integration Suite is taking business integration to the next level by providing a holistic approach to integrating business processes across customers' collaboration networks," said Raghav Keshav, vice president of Product Management, Sterling Commerce. "With this Suite, Sterling Commerce has gained recognition from the analyst community as a leader in B2B gateway software, integration-as-a-service and managed file transfer. Only Sterling Commerce is a leader in all these areas and we continue to innovate in delivering these capabilities on-premise, as a service, or in a hybrid deployment."

In addition to this report, Sterling Commerce was listed as a Leader in the September 2009 report, "Magic Quadrant for Managed File Transfer" by Gartner. The company's leadership in business integration is bolstered by its relationship with its parent company AT&T, in providing added reach to expand the company's large B2B customer base and strong market penetration as well as the financial backing to strengthen its solution offering. This year, the company introduced several new solutions and new offerings, including Sterling Community Manager and Sterling E-invoicing.

The report states, "We estimate that companies worldwide spent more than $1.5 billion on integration as a service (IaaS) and B2B integration outsourcing (see "Forecast: Sizing the Cloud; Understanding the Opportunities in Cloud Services"). They will purchase and consume much more integration services in the next five years; thus, companies should be aware of how the B2B integration services market is evolving to take maximum advantage of B2B services in their B2B projects."

Sterling Collaboration Network and Sterling Commerce Managed Services, part of Sterling Business Integration Suite, enable the secure and seamless execution of multi-enterprise business processes with 100 percent of a company's business community to improve business agility, operational efficiency, and business performance. Sterling Business Integration Suite is an end-to-end integration solution that addresses the critical challenges of B2B integration, managed file transfer, and enterprise integration that enables companies to optimize their business collaboration network -- the ecosystem of customers, partners and suppliers with whom they do business. Customers can choose to deploy solutions within the Suite as on-premise software, as a service, or in a hybrid environment combining both deployment options, enabling them to tailor a solution that best meets their business objectives now and into the future.

About the Magic Quadrants

The Magic Quadrants are copyrighted 2009 by Gartner, Inc. and are reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Sterling Commerce

Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc (NYSE: T) company, helps companies optimize and transform their Business Collaboration Network to accelerate revenues and reduce costs. Sterling Commerce provides more than 30,000 customers worldwide applications and integration solutions to connect, communicate and collaborate inside and outside their enterprise. More information can be found at www.sterlingcommerce.com.

Contact Information: For more information, contact: Julie Redard Sterling Commerce (978) 513-6386 Julie_Redard@stercomm.com Jamie Leicht Fleishman-Hillard (619) 237-7711 jamiemarie.leicht@fleishman.com